Experiment

[Boss Man Zwiebelsohn]

In real world jazz practice outside of internet forums, trust me when I say there’s no general rule. Tbf I think for some tunes it’s clearer not to include a key sig.

(I think I remember Reg saying he was taught at Berklee not to use a key signature but I might be misremembering. It’s one of those things like universal four count ins for odd time tunes).

There are some charts of my tunes that I’d probably remove the keys on. For anything non functional or contemporary it’s kind of a bit annoying even if your tune is technically a contrafact on Out of Nowhere or whatever. Why do that?

The New Real Book tends to write functional tunes out with a key sig and contemporary tunes without which seems a good common sense idea. I think that book has good notation conventions by and large.

But I’m lucky to work with beast sight readers who really don’t care.

If you are interested in reading jazz charts in the wild you need to get used to both, because you will see both. It’s a bit like chord symbols discourse - you can justify the ideal solution, but unless you sit on an ivory tower you need to deal with different ways of writing things out.

So, there ya go, consider this an introduction into the vagaries of jazz notation.


This is an affectation I do not understand. It’s like comic sans in music form.

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I am aware that (like always in life) there will be non-ideal situations I will have to deal with.

But I always strive for beauty -- be it in graphics, be it in music.

My general interest in typography dates back longer than my interest in music and especially jazz and blues. I grew up with a huge library in my parent's house which included among many other topics specialist books on arts, graphic design and typography. Those books came from my grandmother whom I never got to know because she died before I was born. She had been a graphics designer and typographer who had e.g. worked for De Gruyter publishing house in Berlin in the 20ies and 30ies of the last century.

My interest in beautiful music engraving started after I took interest in the Lilypond open source programming language and reading an article on their website maybe fifteen years ago.

Essay on automated music engraving

I am fascinated by the skills that were used to create beautiful printed scores in the last century.

Scores of that kind are my ideal.

Using Comic Sans will kill nobody. But there are countless fonts that are much more beautiful than CS.

Using "Jazz fonts" will hurt nobody as well. But if I look at e.g. the lead sheets in the Hal Leonhard "Play-along" series I simply do not like them visually (and not only because the fermata looks like a Hitler face).

Why should I use a bad imitation of a real hand-written score if there are so many beautiful music fonts available, are you aware how many of them exist?

These are just a few of them:

Elbsound Music Fonts Comparison v2.0

You might call it a spleen but developing an eye is like developing your ears. The more you listen the more you can tell e.g. if someone's bebop sounds authentic. And you start to develop your taste. Which is of course a personal and individual thing.

I might have a spleen bad I am not enough of a snob to not want to play from a lead sheet that I find could have better typography.

[ragman1]

I was hoping it would sound better than ragman's midi jamz.

I don't know what you mean by jamz. Plural of jam sessions?

[ragman1]

Re. my midis...

At my end, on a laptop with headphones, the midis are very clear and very useful. You can hear exactly how the tunes sound with the chords and it's all in perfect time. Very good for learning strange heads and rhythms, etc.

But apparently you don't hear them like that, especially, I suspect, on mobile phones. So, although they're supposed to be helpful, I may have to stop posting them.

Or carry on and to hell with it, I suppose :-)

[Christian Miller]

I might have a spleen bad I am not enough of a snob to not want to play from a lead sheet that I find could have better typography.

Maybe we should organise a boycot


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[Christian Miller]

Re. my midis...

At my end, on a laptop with headphones, the midis are very clear and very useful. You can hear exactly how the tunes sound with the chords and it's all in perfect time. Very good for learning strange heads and rhythms, etc.

But apparently you don't hear them like that, especially, I suspect, on mobile phones. So, although they're supposed to be helpful, I may have to stop posting them.

Or carry on and to hell with it, I suppose :-)

Go all out and do it as a NES chiptune next time

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[ragman1]

Sounds like the Telstar effect. Not sure I could handle that. Not for jazz.

But if anyone knows a better alternative (nice and clear on mobile phones) to what I was doing with the midi tell me about it. Free would be good too :-)

[pamosmusic]

But if anyone knows a better alternative (nice and clear on mobile phones) to what I was doing with the midi tell me about it. Free would be good too :-)

A guitar?

[CliffR]

A guitar?

Gentlemen! You can't play guitar in here - this is the theory room!

[Boss Man Zwiebelsohn]

Go all out and do it as a NES chiptune next time

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I demand a Commodore C64 chiptune. NES is too new school.

[Boss Man Zwiebelsohn]

Gentlemen! You can't play guitar in here - this is the theory room!

Word!

[CliffR]

I demand a Commodore C64 chiptune. NES is too new school.

Commodore VIC-20 is even more old-skool!

[Christian Miller]

I demand a Commodore C64 chiptune. NES is too new school.

But not ZX Spectrum 48k, retro has its limits!

Boop beep

(128k had a decent Yamaha chip if I recall?)


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[Boss Man Zwiebelsohn]

Maybe we should organise a boycot


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Do you have musicians unions on that island?

Maybe I just discovered a niche for YouTube videos. I smell dollars ...

As far as I understood the most important thing is to have a stank face thumbnail image possibly AI created.

[Christian Miller]

Do you have musicians unions on that island?

Do you want 20,000 words of bile?

I send money to an organisation that calls itself a union and they send me a magazine I don’t read and give me Public Liability Insurance. Let’s leave it at that.


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[pamosmusic]

I’ve got a solo recorded for a very specific thing where I was playing with a very specific conceptual thing I’ve been working on with a student. Over Stella.

Anyone up for a round two?

[Christian Miller]

I’ve got a solo recorded for a very specific thing where I was playing with a very specific conceptual thing I’ve been working on with a student. Over Stella.

Anyone up for a round two?

Gowan


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[RJVB]

I demand a Commodore C64 chiptune. NES is too new school.

Everything is possible...
SIDPLAY - the premier C64 music player for the Mac
GitHub - libsidplayfp/sidplayfp: Console SID/MUS player

I send money to an organisation that calls itself a union

What, still? After Brexit?

(I was reminded of using Gogole Translate in its early days to get a headstart with translating an article to French. It referred to the European Union in some way in several places, at least one of which GT dutifully converted to l'Europe des Syndicats. Having lost all chance to a potential dream job in Germany not long before that, thanks to an unannounced hostage taking by one of the big extreme leftwing unions that was a painfully funny and true mis-translation...)

[pamosmusic]

Dear THEORY CATS

stella exercise.pdf - Google Drive

wtf was I thinking?

[Christian Miller]

Instant reaction - mutual friend?

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[Christian Miller]

Actually forget that, not enough 13b9 chords. My super big brain analysis will be winging its way to you soon.


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[Christian Miller]

Everything is possible...
SIDPLAY - the premier C64 music player for the Mac
GitHub - libsidplayfp/sidplayfp: Console SID/MUS player



What, still? After Brexit?

(I was reminded of using Gogole Translate in its early days to get a headstart with translating an article to French. It referred to the European Union in some way in several places, at least one of which GT dutifully converted to l'Europe des Syndicats. Having lost all chance to a potential dream job in Germany not long before that, thanks to an unannounced hostage taking by one of the big extreme leftwing unions that was a painfully funny and true mis-translation...)

So less of a Google translate and more of a Gogol translate?


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[pamosmusic]

Instant reaction - mutual friend?

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You're not too far off.

[pamosmusic]

Dear THEORY CATS

stella exercise.pdf - Google Drive

wtf was I thinking?

The video … it was improvised so there are places where my written rhythms are just approximations of my garbage time-feel, but there you go.

[Boss Man Zwiebelsohn]

TBH it sounds like you did not think much of the melody.

[Christian Miller]

First 8